


swallow up the flame like me

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: ...not of the person getting dismembered, Blood and Injury, Caleb's Canon Backstory, Dismemberment, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Not of a main character!, Panic Attacks, Please read with caution, Post-episode 25, Torture, and all attached warnings, yikes guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 17:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15248751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: It has been nine days since Fjord, Jester, and Yasha disappeared in silence and left nothing behind them but blood and scuffed grass.  When the rest of the Mighty Nein manages to capture someone who might have information, Caleb decides it's time to take things into his own hands and convinces Beau to let him.





	swallow up the flame like me

**Author's Note:**

> LISTEN.
> 
> I COULD NOT STOP MYSELF.
> 
> BOY I HOPE YOU READ THOSE WARNINGS.
> 
> Title from Gasoline, by Halsey, because it's very good.
> 
> Edit: Hm. Can't say I expected this out of every fic I've ever posted to be the one that needed this note, but here are a few fun facts. One, this is neither a published novel nor a thesis on how I Really And Truly believe the characters operate. It is a fic I wrote at two in the morning as a response to a specific ask on Tumblr. Two, I do not have a beta reader and to be completely honest if I ran everything I wrote for AO3 past a beta and did four drafts of it, I would never get any work done on my actual novel that I'd like to finish before I'm fifty. Three, I'm a real human person posting this to a fanfiction website, not taking it into a writing class looking for constructive criticism. You're not obligated to be here and to be frank I'm not obligated to listen to you.
> 
> I'm not saying "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all" but really consider if spending that couple minutes on your unhelpful comment is a worthwhile use of your time.

They’ve been gone nine days.  _Nine_.  The job for the Gentleman is less than nothing right now, because Fjord and Jester and Yasha are gone, and they’ve been gone for _nine days_.  It’s been a long time since Caleb felt so shaken, and that says a lot, because Caleb is shaken more minutes than not.  Fjord, with his steady kind heart—a liar’s heart, Caleb is pretty sure, but a kind one—and Yasha, with her soft voice and her strong arms, and Jester, brave happy Jester, practically a baby still, just out of her mother’s home for the first time and out getting into trouble.  They’re _gone_ , taken in silence and leaving nothing but scuffed grass and blood behind, and Caleb is shaken in a way he hasn’t been in a long, long time.

Caleb is good at being afraid, is the thing.  He’s even good at being angry, lately, the kind of blind flare of _no, stop, leave me alone_ that bursts out of him at irrational times and leaves nothing but ashes and guilt in its wake.  But this…

Caleb is _furious_.

He’s not alone in that.  He’s fairly sure that Beau’s never had a best friend before, because she cursed herself _hoarse_ with rage over Fjord, to say nothing of Jester and Yasha.  Molly’s lazy good humor hasn’t done more than flicker for nine days, his lips pressed together so tight that the red-purple flesh starts to show pale, tail lashing constantly.  Nott—Nott is holding it together best, Caleb thinks.  She’s drunk, obviously, but she’s steadier than the rest of them, even if she shakes sometimes when she thinks Caleb isn’t looking.

But Caleb is so furious he can barely breathe, and he thinks—

He thinks that Beau, at least, sees it, when they stand in the middle of the field where their friends were beaten into submission, and Caleb snarls, “ _Disgusting_.”  It bursts from his lips without permission, Mage Ikithon’s—Trent’s word, and Beau barks “Damn right” while Nott inspects the blood spray on the grass.  They’re so, so lucky that it’s dry, the skies clear and utterly cloudless for the first time in weeks, or all trace of the fight would have been gone by the time they woke.

But now it’s day _nine_ , and Caleb has passed out of the first hot rush of wrath and into something cold and precise and familiar.  Normally he fights it, when this sort of thing rises in him, but now—now they need this.  He wraps the monster around himself like a cloak and sets himself a goal, just like he was taught, and he is goddamn well going to see this through.  Jester, Fjord, and Yasha are coming back alive.

They just need a place to start.

All the searching that the four of them have done has done nothing but net them an innkeeper who’s heard stories of people disappearing and one guy who won’t talk.

 “I don’t know what else to do,” Molly says, his lips pulling back to bare all his teeth.  “Whatever they’re paying him, it’s more than we’ve got between us.”

“I could steal enough to pay him off,” Nott volunteers, but she doesn’t sound hopeful.  “We could—we could try Friends again, or Suggestion.  Caleb?”  She looks up at him, standing on an abandoned toolbench to put her a little closer to eye level with the rest of them.  “What do you think?”

Caleb laces his fingers behind the nape of his neck and shakes his head, silent.  He misses Frumpkin’s steady weight, but the cat is keeping watch on top of the abandoned farmhouse while the four of them debate their next play.

“Trust me,” Beau says grimly, fidgeting with her hand wraps in a compulsive jerking motion, as if trying to calm herself down.  She hasn’t stopped twitching in nine days, like a wolf at bay.  “That guy’s been trained to resist that shit, I’ll bet my staff on it.  We’re not gonna crack him with low-order magic, so unless Caleb can whip out a quick Dominate Person…?”

He shakes his head again and clears his throat, dropping his hands to say, “No, I do not know that spell.  I never learned it.”  It’s higher order magic, the kind that Trent promised to teach Caleb and the others—after they graduated, of course.  “Maybe we should leave him here for a day or two,” Caleb muses, taking care to make his voice unsure, thoughtful.  “Let him—what—sweat?”

“Not a bad idea,” Nott mutters.  “Isolation does stuff to people.”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb says, watching Molly.  “He may be feeling more talkative in three days.  Yasha and the others—they are strong.  They can wait.”

“Maybe they _can’t_ ,” Molly snaps.  Loyal Molly, fierce Molly, good, _predictable_ Mollymauk, Caleb thinks, a distant twinge of guilt.  Molly does not deserve to be manipulated like this, but he would never agree to what Caleb is about to suggest, and so Caleb needs him gone.  “Maybe they’ve been taken by—by slavers, or by someone who wants to take them apart, or by the army!  Fuck, any of them would be worth their weight in gold to the right people, and you want to just _wait_?”

“We clearly can’t force this guy to talk,” Beau says, and starts cracking her knuckles, one at a time, down one hand and up the other.  The sound is as loud as snapping sticks in a fire.  “We’ve been trying for two hours already, what else do we _have_?”

“Well--” Nott starts, and then she stops, and her word hangs in the air for a moment.  Caleb catches her eye and shakes his head.

Molly makes a disgusted noise and storms away.  It’s been hard on him, Caleb thinks analytically.  All Molly has ever known is having people around him, people he trusts and who trust him and who he would put his life on the line for, and it’s clearly driving him mad to be more or less in limbo until they get some information.

It’s okay.  Caleb has a plan.  Caleb makes good plans.  There is a reason that Caleb was supposed to be the leader of war mages, once, and it was not his charming personality.

“Nott,” Caleb says quietly.  “Maybe you should go see if he’s all right.  We shouldn’t go off alone right now.”

Nott gives him a look like he’s talking gibberish.  “Are you—are you sure, Caleb?” she asks, voice higher and thinner than ever, clutching her flask so tightly her hands are trembling.  “I could—I could try to talk to our—friend in there.”

“I am sure,” Caleb says, still quiet and level.  “We will figure out how to proceed once Molly is feeling more clear-headed.  Tell him--”  Caleb hesitates, because it’s a useless sentiment, but he sighs and says, “Tell him I am sorry, I did not wish to upset him.  Beauregard and I will be fine keeping watch.”

Nott narrows her eyes at him, then turns her lamplike yellow stare onto Beau.  “Keep an eye on him,” she commands, and Caleb does not point out that he is a grown man perfectly capable of protecting himself, because it is—nice, to have Nott watching out for him.  It’s selfish and foolish to want that, but he does, because Caleb has never claimed to be a good person, or, at least, not in a very long time.

“Sure thing,” Beau says, and the anger in her voice relents just slightly as she gives Nott a nod.

“If you’re _sure_ ,” Nott repeats, looking back at Caleb as she pulls her hood up and fastens her flask to her hip.

“I am positive.”  And he tries to muster a smile for her before she goes.  It probably doesn’t go well, but it never does, and she looks slightly mollified as she hops down off the workbench and darts off after Molly’s brilliantly colored form.

Caleb counts down in his head from five, and as he hits _ein_ , Beau says lowly, “So, what the fuck was that?”

“I needed Mollymauk to go, he needs to calm down and he would not like what I am planning,” Caleb says.  “And Nott—this would upset her.”  It has been ten days since Beau suggested that they keep each other on the straight and narrow.  He hopes she’ll forgive him for this, eventually.  “I need a favor, Beauregard.”

“Okay,” Beau says warily.

“I need you to guard the door, and get me ten minutes alone with that man.  Stall the others if you can.”

Beau’s eyes go wide, the muddled blue flashing as clear and bright as sapphire in the sunlight.  It’s still clear, has been for nine days.  Caleb has never known autumn to have such pristine weather.  Beau is more than a few inches shorter than Caleb, when he actually stands up straight, but she rocks up on her toes to get right into his face and he imagines that he can feel the air near her skin vibrate with the sheer _energy_ coiled up in her bones.

“Caleb,” she says, forcing him to meet her eyes.  “You want to tell me what the hell you’ve got in mind?”

Caleb blinks back at her and smiles.  This time it comes to the surface effortlessly, flawless and blank and forming as if on someone else’s lips, and she recoils a full step and a half from him.

“I am going to save our friends,” he says.

Beau studies him and he lets the smile drop, and tries to—to be _open_.  Beau is so honest, all the time, even when she’s being abrasive or even outright cruel, she can clear her face but she wears her feelings in the line of her spine and the shape of her hands.  Caleb remembers, with on observer’s clarity and emotionlessness, being that honest as a child, when he was first learning magic and he was enthralled with the possibilities.  He remembers, vague and blurry, being even more open than Beau, in the asylum, the way that wild animals are open with their feelings. 

It makes him a little sick with anxiety, trying to be that open now, trying to let her read his intentions on his face, but he does it, and holds still until she nods, slowly.

“How are you planning to do that, Caleb?”

Caleb takes a breath and lets it out and straightens up, squares his shoulders and lets his hands fall to his sides from their unconscious fingering of his coat.  “I am going to do something that the rest of you should not do.  It will not take long.”

Beau visibly fumbles, struggling for words, and the rush of affection that rises in his chest takes Caleb off-guard.  She is going to let him do it, he knows it already, he can see the decision written all over her face in the same arguments that he made to himself—they need this information, Mollymauk could not bear to be involved, Nott was always too kindhearted for this work, and it is a monstrous thing to do but they _need this information_.  Beau is strong, and Caleb is already broken, so the two of them will do this and the others will always know that they didn’t have a say.

“Do you—know what you’re doing?” Beau asks, awkward.

“I am a trained interrogator,” Caleb says, and he has run through his measure of openness.  The words are cold, without even a flicker of emotion.

“No, yeah, I--”  Beau swallows, the rich sun-touched gold-brown of her skin going a bit grey, almost sickly, but she doesn’t flinch again.  “I know you know how to do this.  Are you going to be okay?”

Caleb blinks, a little taken aback.  “ _Ja,_ I’ll be fine,” he says, confused.  “He is a—a hired thug, if he gets loose I will call for you and we can handle him quickly.”

“I meant—yeah, okay.”  Beau sighs, leaving Caleb feeling like he’s missed something, and then she moves, one of her quick sudden motions that takes him off-guard as she throws both arms around his shoulders in a stiff hug.  Caleb freezes up for a moment, and barely manages to get a pat onto her ribs before she retreats.  “Just, uh.  Don’t dick around,” she says gruffly.  “No need to keep doing this to yourself for longer than you have to.”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb agrees, and puts his hands in his pockets, feeling the hilt of the knife he borrowed from Nott this morning.  “ _Danke_ , Beauregard.”

“Ten minutes,” Beau says.  “Not a minute more or I come in after you.”

“ _Sehr gut_.”  And Caleb nods and Beau nods and, just like that, he has turned her into a monster, too.  “I am…sorry,” he says, and hurries back into the house before she can answer.

On his way inside, Caleb snaps his fingers, and Frumpkin vanishes from the roof.

The man they’ve captured is a half-elf, brown-haired and pale, with a laborer’s hands but no scars.  He has the cocky air of a man suddenly come into money, and, clearly, enough clarity of mind to resist Molly’s enchantments.  Caleb knows enough about him to understand his grasp of the situation.  Their prisoner believes he has been taken by desperate but fundamentally good people, seeking their friends—people willing to use magic and money to achieve their means, but nothing more.

Nothing _worse_.

The man is tied thoroughly to a chair, his wrists chained to a table made of solid oak that probably weighs more than Caleb does.  He sits carelessly, lazily, in the dim light slipping between the boards covering the windows, and when Caleb closes the door behind him and locks it, he sits up with a smirk on his face.

“You’re back,” the man drawls.  “Hoping to magic it out of me again?”

Caleb doesn’t answer him, sends a globe of light into each corner of the ceiling and watches the man blink in the sudden brilliance.  Then Caleb pulls up the three-legged stool on the other side of the table and settles onto it, hands folded on the oak and his back as straight as he was ever trained to keep it.

“What is your name?” Caleb asks, keeping his voice sweet and even.

The thing is, he has not spoken to this man in two hours.  He has cast Suggestion—or tried to—but he has not even once been this man’s questioner, and he has kept it that way on purpose.  Because now, the man looks taken aback.

“I—what?”

“Your name, _Herr_ ,” Caleb repeats.  “I would like to know your name.”

“It’s, uh.  Kerney,” he says, uncertain.  “What’s, uh, yours?”

“My name is Caleb.”  Caleb takes his hands from the table and lets them fall to his lap, leaning back and slipping a hand into his pocket.  “I am going to ask you a few questions, _ja_?  It will be very quick.  No charms, no tricks.  And if you answer all my questions, and you tell me the truth, then you will be free to go.  It sounds good, _ja_?”

His prisoner—Kerney—smirks again.  “Sure, bud.  Happy to help.”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb says, and palms the knife up into his sleeve before he rests his hands back on the table.  His face is still serene, his voice still calm.  “I am sure you are.  That is for the best, _verstehen?_   I am a reasonable man, we can be done with this quickly as long as you answer.”

“I don’t know shit,” Kerney declares.  He has a terrible poker face, and the short, jerky wave of his hand, an attempt at a nonchalant sweep of the arm, doesn’t help.  “Sorry about your friends, but sounds like they’re--”

The words dissolve into a scream as Caleb catches Kerney’s hand, forces it flat palm-down, and puts his knife through the muscle between thumb and finger.

“ _Nein_ , don’t scream,” Caleb says.  “This will heal.  There,” he says, approving, as Kerney forces his mouth closed.  “ _Sei ein guter Junge._   Tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know shit,” Kerney spits, shaking, eyes already running.  “ _Fuck_ you.”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb sighs.  “That’s what I thought.  Now, Kerney, _Liebling_ , I understand that you have an employer,” he continues, like he’s discussing the prices of rations with a salesman.  He draws the knife out of Kerney’s hand, swift and clean, and blood gushes out of the puncture.  It’s not an artery, though.  Caleb knows every blood vessel in the body, every place where a knife will kill quickly and every place where even the largest burn will kill slow and painful.

Caleb holds Kerney’s wrist down and keeps talking as his prisoner shakes and shivers.  It’s like Caleb is watching from a distance, wrapped in cold and cotton, the smell of the blood and the feeling of the knife so real they burn but—happening to someone else. 

“Kerney,” he says softly, almost in a murmur.  “I want this to be easy for you.  I do.”  He uses all his weight to force Kerney’s hand flat again, and starts with the last joint of the smallest finger and the point of the knife.  “Don’t struggle, the knife will slip,” he adds, and cuts through the tendon.

The last joint of Kerney’s finger comes off with a wet _pop_ , and another howl of pain.

“There, there,” Caleb says, stroking Kerney’s wrist with the hand not holding the knife, a gentle and soothing motion as Kerney’s finger stains the oak with sticky red.  “It is only one finger.  You have nine more, and most of that one.  Are you ready to answer my questions now, Kerney?  They are very easy.  I am a reasonable man, as I said.  Honor among thieves, eh?”

“You’re—you—I don’t know--”

Caleb takes the second joint in one swift motion.  It doesn’t matter that he damages the bone, that bone won’t be Kerney’s problem for long.  He waits for Kerney to be through screaming before he speaks again.

“Don’t lie to me again, Kerney.”  He lets a note of warning slip into his voice.  “Now.  As I was saying.  I understand that you have an employer, _Liebling_ , and that they are paying you well.”  Caleb toys idly with the knife in one hand, the other still rubbing reassuring circles into Kerney’s wrist.  “That is exciting, _ja_?  I am a mercenary myself, sometimes.  Being paid well, it is good, it makes you feel loyal to your employer.  How much are you being paid, exactly, Kerney?”

Kerney shakes his head, already sobbing.

“I don’t care about the money, Kerney,” Caleb says, tracing the point of the knife around the first knuckle of Kerney’s ring finger.  It’s not advisable to take the last bone of the finger off someone he’s meaning to keep conscious—too many blood vessels, not as many nerves. 

He digs the knife in, pushing the point through the close-fit gap between the bones, and Kerney tries to yank his hand away again.  This time, the blade scrapes against bone, cutting down and out at an angle, and Caleb forced Kerney’s hand flat again.

“I am sorry, but I am working on a time limit, _Liebling_ ,” Caleb says, soft and apologetic, as he fixes the jagged cut into another precise incision.  The last joint of the ring finger comes away in a fresh wash of blood.  “Normally, I would do this slowly.  Start with dark rooms and silence, and then keeping you awake, and then I might have moved on to knives.  But my friends, I do not know what your employer is doing to them.  So you understand that I need to find them, and quickly.  I do not have time to do this gently.  How much are you being paid?”

Kerney pants through his teeth, keening raggedly on every exhale.  Caleb has used four of his ten minutes, from when he left Beau.  Knife pressed to skin, Caleb is about to begin cutting through the tendons of the next joint down when Kerney gasps out, “Please, no.  They pay a hundred gold a month, a-and twice that if you ca-an find someone for them.”

“ _Sehr gut_ , very good,” Caleb says, pulling the knife away and putting every ounce of sincerity he can muster into the praise.  “See how quickly I stopped?  You are doing wonderfully, Kerney.  Now, we cannot offer you nearly so much in gold right now.  We have more people to bribe, _ja_?  But you were very good just now, and I want that to continue.  Can you tell me any names, Kerney?”

“They’ll _kill_ me,” Kerney sobs.

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb sighs, shaking his head in disappointment.  “I thought you might say that.” 

He takes his time on the next knuckle, doing the dissection properly—skin, then muscle, then tendons and ligaments, until finally he can simply give the point of the knife a twist and let the second phalange of Kerney’s ring finger fall to the table.  It takes less than a minute.  Caleb was a very astute student, and, to him, it has been a mere handful of years since he did this regularly.  Everyone always said that Caleb was a dab hand at torture.

He tells Kerney as much while Kerney’s two severed fingers bleed.

“Did you know,” Caleb continues, moving on to the middle finger without a pause, “that the tradition of wearing a wedding ring on your third finger comes from the belief that it was the only one with a direct line to the heart?”  Kerney’s voice has broken from screaming by the time the second joint of his middle finger falls away.  It has been eight minutes, and there is a muffled argument being conducted in shouting behind the house.  “It is nonsense, of course.  But sweet nonsense, _ja_?” 

Caleb sets the knife four inches outside Kerney’s reach and wipes his hands clean on his coat, taking care to seem unruffled.  Then Caleb rifles through his pockets until he finds a square of clean linen for some spell or another, and he gently wipes the tears away from Kerney’s face.

“All right,” Caleb says softly.  “Do you want to tell me those names now?”

“I _ca-an’t_ ,” Kerney insists.  “Stop, _please_ stop, I can’t tell you anything.”

“I understand, _Liebling,_ ” Caleb says, stroking Kerney’s hair, and he casts Burning Hands.  He cauterizes two stumps before it turns out that actually, yes, Kerney very much wants to tell Caleb those names. 

The room reeks of cooking meat, and Kerney has gone from cracked screaming through his damaged vocal cords to a hollow, animal moan.  He looks nothing like the cocky man, sure of his own eventual freedom, from before.  Caleb doesn’t anticipate much, but asks idly after the spelling while he cauterizes the third stump—no need to let the man bleed to death, and a cleric will probably be able to see to the healing.  It takes bigger magic than Kerney can afford to regrow fingers, but he won’t die of an infection, either.

At almost precisely the ten minute mark, just a few seconds before, there’s a _crash_ like thunder and three pairs of feet pound over the wooden floors.  When they open the door to their impromptu prison cell, Caleb is sitting on the stool, cleaning the knife with the scrap of linen, and six severed joints are spread out in pooled blood on the table while Kerney clutches his hand as close to his chest as possible.

“We are looking for slavers,” Caleb says, still looking down at the knife.  He doesn’t want to see the way they’re looking at him, now.  He hears Molly retch.  “They traffic in—curiosities, I suppose.  A half-orc, an aasimar, and a cleric tiefling are a good collection, for someone rich enough to keep one.  I have written down their names with his best guess at the spelling, and mine.  They have a headquarters in Shady Creek Run, so it seems that we are going north after all.”

“Caleb?” Nott asks, carefully.  “Are you all right?”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb says, and offers her the clean dagger, eyes fixed on a point just past his right toes.  “I am sorry that I took your knife.”

Nott takes it back slowly, as if she’s trying not to startle him.  “That’s okay, Caleb.”

She takes a breath to say something else, but Beau cuts in.

“Okay,” she says.  “What did you promise this guy, once you had the information?  Free to go?”  Caleb nods, and Beau turns to Molly and says, “Blindfold him and take him to a temple.  Leave him there.  Someone will take care of him.”

“Can I get a ‘please’ in there?” Molly asks, a touch of black humor in his voice.

“ _Please_ ,” Beau says without a moment of hesitation.  “Nott, can you help get him out of here?  Leave your flask.”  Caleb knows he should look up, to see what their silent conversation is about—he can almost taste it, the two of them having an entire argument in _staring_.  But Caleb can’t bring himself to look up, because if he moves, the cold cotton distance from reality will fracture, and he’ll come crashing down into his body again, here, in a room that he covered with blood and screams.

It’s a moment or two before Nott reluctantly says, “Okay.  Here.”  She goes to Caleb first, rather than Kerney, and her clawed hands close around his coat to get his attention.  “Caleb?  I’ll just be gone for a little while, okay?” she says anxiously.  “Don’t—don’t run off.”

“ _Ja_ ,” he murmurs.  “I will not.  I mean,” he revises, for the sake of clarity, “I won’t.”

“Okay,” Nott says, and he can _hear_ the dissatisfaction in her voice, but he also needs her gone.  She will give him justifications and permissions and kindness, and he does not think he could tolerate that right now.

The hand that lands on his shoulder, as Nott starts to untie ropes and unlock manacles, makes him twitch, but Molly’s grip is merely firm, not punishing.  There’s a tremor in Molly’s fingers that seems to propagate down Caleb’s arm and through his ribcage like lacework ice crawling over glass.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Molly says quietly, probably too quietly for Kerney to hear over his own moaning.

“Maybe not,” Caleb says.  “But you were right.  We do not have time.  We need answers now, and—and now we have them.”

“Molly,” Beau says, cutting him off before he can speak again.  “Please.”

Molly’s jewelry jingles lightly as he nods, and he gives Caleb a light squeeze before he lets go and hauls Kerney to his feet.  Between Molly leading and Nott all but nipping at Kerney’s heels, they get the man past Caleb and out of the door, a blindfold over his eyes and blood still dripping sullenly from the puncture to his hand, the first wound Caleb inflicted.

It’s not until they hear the door to the farmhouse close that Caleb feels an arm around his shoulders, forcing him gently to his feet.

“Come on,” Beau says.  “It’ll be better outside.  We should burn this place before we leave, no one will miss it.  Barely fit for habitation.”  She is not as strong as some, perhaps—not as strong as Yasha or Jester—but she is stronger than Caleb, and when she pulls, he follows.

The cotton is fading, and leaving shivers in its wake as cold sets into Caleb’s bones.  He wants sunlight, or better yet a fire, to drive the ice from his veins, but at the same time Beau’s arm is a band of molten iron through his coat, and he doesn’t know if he wants to cringe away or press closer to the heat.  Caleb notices, vaguely, that his hands are shaking, under their speckles of blood.

“Come on,” Beau is still saying.  “This way, out the back.  Fuck me, Caleb, what the hell—no, this way, there’s a step—there’s another step—good, okay.”

And then they’re outside, and Beau is easing him down on the grass before he can fall.

“Caleb?  Caleb, can you hear me?”  Someone is talking to him, but Caleb can’t reach his own body, can’t force his lips to move in a response.  His vision comes and goes in waves of black and white fuzz, and there’s a terrible sound in the distance, a _ripping_ sound, like someone trying to breathe through a slashed throat or a burst lung.  That’s serious, he thinks hazily, he needs to find who that is, do something for them, but he can’t _move_.

There’s a blurry impression in front of him, blue and brown, and something is restraining his hands, holding him tight by the wrists, and if he could move, he might be able to make it stop, make it go away, but all he can do is shake himself to pieces.  Caleb feels like a broken mirror, held in its old shape for a few precarious moments by virtue of good balance and now falling in deadly shards to the floor.  Someday he’ll shatter all the way, he thinks wildly, and there’ll be nothing left except the frame, his body left abandoned again.

“ _Fuck_ ,” someone says with feeling, and then the chattering voice stops and something cracks into his cheek, hard.

Caleb’s vision clears and he throws out a hand and fire leaps from his fingers before he can stop the impulse.

“Beauregard,” he gasps as he snaps his hand back to his chest.  A tree at the edge of the field catches fire, and for a terrible moment he can’t see her anywhere.

“I’m fine,” Beau says, picking herself up from the ground.  Caleb’s vision is nominally clearer, and he recognizes the blue and brown shape now, it’s Beau, it’s _Beauregard_ and he just tried to _kill her_ , if she was a little less nimble, a little slower, she would never have been able to throw herself aside in time.  “Hey,” she barks, pointing a finger at him, and she looks remarkably like every statue of her goddess in that moment, Ioun in a fighter’s garb, done taking mortal nonsense.  “Caleb, take a deep breath _right now_.”

Shaking, Caleb forces himself to do as he’s told.  It hurts and it sounds like something might be tearing in his chest, and he can taste blood where Beau slapped him hard enough to split his lip and tear open his cheek against his teeth.

“I am sorry,” he whispers.  “I did not mean--”

“I knew what the fuck I was doing, I’m fast enough to get out of the way,” Beau says, dusting herself off as if her hands aren’t shaking.  “Check this out,” she adds, sweeping a hand over herself.  “Not a mark on me.  You want to take a look yourself?”

Caleb forces his head down, once, in a nod, and Beau comes closer, kneeling down in front of him with her arms open to display her chest.  Caleb’s fingers tremble as he reaches out toward her, stop just short of touching her as she twists like a cat to show him her back.  There’s some soot on one shoulder, and her hands are a bit scraped from hitting the ground, but otherwise she looks as she ever does, slightly disheveled and cocky as hell.

“I am sorry,” he says, pulling his traitorous hands back into his chest and curling them in toward him, hiding his fingers and palms in the fabric of his shirt.  He’s still shaking, and his vision is still feathered grey and black in the corners, but he does not seem to be in immediate danger of passing out anymore, and although his bones are still cold and terrible, he can feel them again.  “I am—I am sorry.”

Beau shifts around until she’s sitting cross-legged in front of him.  “I scared you,” she says, dismissive, as if he did not just try to turn her to ash.  “Sorry I slapped you, it looks like maybe I did some damage.”

Numbly, Caleb presses his tongue to the split in his lip, the bright shock of pain and salt-iron taste of blood steadying him.  Caleb is good at hurting, at being hurt, he knows how to use the pain like a lifeline.  “It is nothing.  I tried to kill you.”

“And you failed,” Beau says.  “Gotta get up earlier than that to hit me with a fireball.”

Caleb makes a sound that’s almost a hysterical laugh, and Beau arches an eyebrow like she’s considering slapping him again, but he stops and she doesn’t.  They sit there for a moment, Beau taking exaggerated slow breaths and stiller than he’s ever seen her, hands draped loosely on her knees and spine straight as a rod as she watches him with slow-blinking blue eyes.  Raggedly, Caleb forces himself to match her breathing, gasping in one shallow sip of air at a time until he can take in more, and more, until his vision is clear and sun-bright again.  His chest feels like he’s been stabbed, and his head aches something fierce, and his hands are still trembling against his chest, but he can breathe again.

Beau stirs at last, leans forward to prop her elbows on her knees and her chin on one fist.  “So,” she says quietly.  “That’s the sort of shit Ikithon trained you for.”

“ _Ja,_ ” Caleb whispers.  “Not—not quite like that.  He trained us to take our time.  But _ja_.”

“Fuck,” Beau says again.  She chews on her lower lip for a long moment, and then she says, “What did you do to him?”

“I cut off three of his fingers, one bone at a time,” Caleb says flatly.  He tries not to make it sound like a dare, tries not to make it sound like he’s challenging Beau to call him a monster, a killer, a disgusting excuse for a sentient being.  What kind of person does the things Caleb has done?  “And then I used Burning Hands to close the wounds until he talked.”

Beau nods, slow and steady.  “You shouldn’t do this again,” she says.

“You agreed.”

“Yeah, I did,” Beau says.  “And I can’t say I would agree again if we were in this position a second time, you know?  I care more about Jester and Fjord and Yasha than I do about some sick fuck who works for slavers because they pay him enough gold.  But this is fucking you up, Caleb.”

Caleb tries to smile at her.  “I am already fucked up.”

“I noticed that,” she says dryly.  “But dude, that was—that was some really bad shit in there, and I thought you were, like, maybe going to die out here.  I thought you were maybe going to hyperventilate _to death_ , do you get that?”

“It is not possible to hyperventilate to death.”

“You can make a cat out of incense, I don’t think you get to talk about impossible.”  Beau pauses, frowning.  “Where the hell is your cat, Caleb?”

“I sent him away,” Caleb says to his knees.  He doesn’t know how to say it so that he doesn’t sound like a madman, doesn’t know how to say _I could not bear the idea of Frumpkin being involved in this._   Frumpkin is the only purely good thing that Caleb has probably ever created—the idea of his familiar being within a mile of him, doing something like this, makes him feel sick.  “I could call him back.”

“Yeah, do that,” Beau agrees, her voice low and almost soft, like she might have guessed.

Caleb snaps his fingers, and Frumpkin appears, yowling in aggravation, on the grass beside him.  The cat continues to complain as he hitches himself gracefully into Caleb’s lap, and Caleb finally pulls his hands away from his chest to bury his bloody fingers in Frumpkin’s fur, pulling him close.  Beau watches them with the same steady stare as before, not entirely unlike a cat herself.  Frumpkin is soft and clean and warm, just like he was the first time Caleb summoned him, and the first time Caleb kept him.

“Trent did not allow us to have familiars,” Caleb murmurs, and it would be okay if Beau pretended not to hear him.  But maybe if he really wanted someone to pretend not to hear him, he would be admitting this to someone else.  “He had me whipped when I showed him that I could summon one.”

“I hate this guy more every single day,” Beau says.

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb says grimly, and clutches Frumpkin so close that the cat makes a quiet _mrr_ of protest.  “Are the others—are they angry, about what I did?”

“Molly, a little,” Beau says, reaching out to scratch Frumpkin’s head.  It’s—she’s closer than Caleb would normally like, but it’s okay.  Having Frumpkin there as an intermediary makes it feel less like Beau is caging him in and more like she just happens to be present.  “You know what he’s like, though, kind of a prick.  Likes to believe he’s right about everything.  He’ll be over it by the time he gets back.  At most he might have some complaints that you tricked him into leaving us alone with the guy.”

“And Nott?”

“She’s just pissed I _let_ you,” Beau snorts.  “Listen, Nott’s great and all, but someday she’s gonna have to realize you’re a grown-ass man.  If you really wanted in there, you could have put me to sleep and walked right through the door.”

“ _Ja_ , I could have done that,” Caleb says.  “I considered it.”

“And I’m thrilled you didn’t,” Beau says.  He thinks she’s being sincere, but it can be hard to tell with her sometimes. 

Caleb cuddles Frumpkin for another moment before he can force himself to ask, “And—you?”

“Me what?” Beau asks.

“Are you angry?”

Beau sighs, her fingers slowing on Frumpkin’s head until she’s simply resting them there, not quite close enough to touch Caleb’s shoulder.  “I—no, I’m not.  I mean, yeah, I’m _really_ angry, but not, like, about this.  There’s a lot to be pissed about these days.  But it was—it was a little freaky, how fast you broke him.  I’ve known people who used torture, Caleb, and.”  She stops cold and shakes her head.  “Ten minutes is fast, for what you did to him.”

“I am sorry I involved you in this.”

She makes a disgusted sound and waves her hand sharply.  “I fucking _agreed_ , Caleb, I knew what you were doing.  Maybe not how good you’d be at it, but you were pretty goddamn clear ahead of time.  I don’t like it.  I don’t like that we did it, I don’t like what it’s doing to you, and I don’t like what it’ll probably _keep_ doing to us.  I don’t like knowing that I can be okay with this.  But much as I hate to admit it, Molly’s right.  We don’t have the time to do this the right way, so we’ll have to do it the wrong one, and hope the others can forgive us for it.”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb agrees quietly.  “That is—that is a good way to say it.”

“I was a part of this too,” Beau goes on, catching Caleb’s jaw in a grip just short of punishing and forcing him to raise his head and look at her.  “So stop being a fucking martyr about it and let me take some of the blame.”

“I will—I will do my best.”

“Okay,” Beau says, and lets him go.  She sighs and leans back on her hands, tipping her face up to the sky.  Caleb presses his cheek to Frumpkin’s head and feels the soft rumble of a purr start in the cat’s chest, just like it did when he knelt in the forest and summoned a familiar for the second time in his life, a year and a half out of the asylum.  He cried into Frumpkin’s fur for an hour, that night.  He doesn’t cry now.  He’s not sure he’s capable of something like tears, right now.

“I do not like knowing that I can do this,” Caleb says.

“Yeah,” Beau says quietly, sitting upright and opening her eyes.  “I know you don’t.”

And she reaches out and rests a warm, steady hand on his knee, like the blood on his coat doesn’t bother her at all.

**Author's Note:**

> ...WELL.
> 
> Now that I've shown up to the Critical Role fandom several weeks late with torture fic, I'll just...show myself out. (Until the next time I write 6K of Caleb angst in a fevered 2 AM haze, at least.)
> 
> If you would like to send me an ask about Caleb being terrible and potentially get 6K of torture fic in response, I am [on Tumblr,](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com) and that is the story of how this fic happened.


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